Conventionally, to tighten a boot shoelace used in skiing, snowboarding, skating and the like, a shoelace winding device that can wind up the shoelace by rotating a dial (disk-shaped tab) has been proposed (Patent Documents 1, 2, and 3).
As a shoelace to be used for such shoelace winding devices, a wire-shaped shoelace formed of a composite material of resin and metal, having superior strength and low friction coefficient, and being smooth is used, and both end portions of such a shoelace are fixed to a shoelace winding reel installed in a shoelace winding device.
Accordingly, in order to fix such a shoelace by tying the same onto the shoelace winding reel, the end portions of the shoelace need to be long enough so that the end portions of the shoelace does not come off the reel even when the shoelace is tightened strongly.
However, a gear mechanism for winding up the shoelace, a lock mechanism for retaining the shoelace in a wound-up state, a mechanism for releasing the lock and the like are housed inside the shoelace winding device, and there is a problem of an occurrence of hindrance to operation of the shoelace winding device by the end portions of the shoelace sticking out from the shoelace winding reel to interfere with the internal mechanisms, and that a device easily breaks.
Especially, such a problem becomes more serious by reducing a size of the shoelace winding device that uses the wire-shaped shoelace having low friction coefficient and being smooth, and it is an obstacle to the size reduction of the shoelace winding device.
Moreover, in such a shoelace winding reel installed in a shoelace winding device, size reduction and durability improvement as well as simplification of an assembling work are being required, and resolution of these problems is necessary in order to employ the shoelace winding device to an even greater variety of shoes.